


From the dead: a sense of scale

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: D/s, F/F, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4944427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ninety seconds after Epsilon Carolina had started moving.</p>
<p>Twenty-three hours after Epsilon she stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the dead: a sense of scale

Ninety seconds after Epsilon Carolina had started moving.

Twenty-three hours after Epsilon Carolina stops.

Vanessa has a hand at the back of her neck right over the empty ports. Carolina is on her knees against Vanessa's leg and her back is perfectly straight and she's staring at the door across the room like she's expecting someone to come through. Vanessa wants to slide down to the floor with her, let her forehead rest on the hot skin under her hand, but even now she is uncertain of the boundaries.

Before, Vanessa had thought to calm Carolina, to stop the insistant tap of gloves on keyboard or rhythmic beat of boots, but the look in Carolina's eyes when she'd turned had spoken to something fundamentally, viserally personal in the hurt.

"I'm busy, General."

Vanessa had felt her armour and her rank like a lighthouse. She was not born a leader. She has never been able to lock the doors from the inside and throw away the key. She'd walked away. She'd been a coward, probably, put her own morals over the wellbeing of her soldier. Carolina had thought it weakness. Vanessa knows.

"He would help, sometimes," Carolina says into the silence. Her voice is perfectly even. Vanessa can feel the stitches in her shoulder pulling from where her arm is extended, but she stays very still. "My head got... loud. Even before the implantation. He helped turn it down."

"And now?" Vanessa asks. Out of armour Carolina seems small. It's a different sort of terrifying. Carolina curls forward under Vanessa's hand like she's going to be sick to her stomach. Vanessa remembers the first time she held a gun, the first time she'd ever held something designed to kill in her hands. The metal warming with her skin, the knowledge that by picking up a weapon she had primed the potential for violence.

Dr. Grey had tried to get Carolina to stop. Vanessa had stood just out of sight in the coridor while they yelled at each other and for a few seconds she'd let herself sag against the wall in gratitude. Carolina's grief is a cruel, manic thing, all teeth and claws and animal reaction. Vanessa has never lost a sibling. Vanessa has never had a sibling to lose. She knows the childhood confusion of parents who disappear with the messy signature of a social worker, knows the cold sick sense of determination when her aunt and uncle vanished from their home into the ever-watchful mouth of the Federal Government. She has lost friends and leaders and countless soldiers under her command and they have all been coloured by the sepia film screen of The Cause, each name another drop of fuel to a fire all too eager to burn everything to the ground. Vanessa sees the alien panic and emptiness in Carolina's eyes and she cannot relate.

Carolina twists, half falls against Vanessa's knee and vanessa folds down to the hard floor, wraps her arms around Carolina from behind. Carolina is all hard angles against her, muscles tense and shaking with the strain, elbows and knees jutting like defense. She struggles, but only for a moment. vanessa holds on. she does not know if it is the right thing to do, but she has chosen at the fork in the road and there's no kindness in failing to follow through. Carolina settles but she's still watching the door. Vanessa almost puts a hand over her eyes, then remembers. Carolina wants out, not to be shut in.

"Carolina, look at me." She is learning how to be gentle without walking on eggshells. Carolina's eyes flicker in her direction, briefly, but otherwise she doesn't respond.

Vanessa had been in the room when Carolina's analysis of Epsilon's message came back. "It was real," she'd said, like solving a burning question. Vanessa hadn't known what to say, hadn't known what sort of reaction Carolina was looking for. Carolina had walked past her, unwrapping a ration bar with one hand even as she'd typed furiously into her com pad with the other. Vanessa had wanted to reach out to her, had taken a breath to speak, but she could feel the gazes of the other soldiers in the room like a weight on her shoulders. Carolina's shoulders were very straight. vanessa hadn't said anything.

"Carolina," she says again, and reaches out a hand to turn her chin away. Carolina doesn't resist. Vanessa meneuvvers them so Carolina is sitting facing her, back to the door. When Carolina twitches to look over her shoulder Vanessa tugs sharply with a hand in her hair. Carolina's gaze finally focuses on her. External stimulous.

"What do you need?" anessa asks.

Carolina makes a choked offf little gasping noise like coming up from too long under water. "what? I don't need--"

"Ok," Vanessa cuts her off. "What do you want me to do?" She knows this isn't a familiar position for Carolina, and they've got pretty different communication styles. Vanessa is getting used to trying different approaches until they find the best, but it leavves her with a bitter taste of shame to be relying on these strategies even now. It feels like falling short.

Carolina frowns, like she's working a particularly difficult math problem. Absently she grabs one of Vanessa's hands and wraps it around her own wrist, pressing hard hand over hand until Vanessa applies the tight pressure on her own. "It's very loud," she says, finally.

At hour twenty Grey had finally convinced Carolina to take painkillers. Carolina had made a few irritable objections, pointing out her body's high metabolic functioning, her resistance to most drugs. Vanessa, having seen Carolina in a variety of situation with and without the speed boost and associated chemicles had found this last part questionable at best. Grey had shrugged off her concerns and injected her before she could come up with any more arguements. It'd been after that that she'd started to drift, losing track of her train of thought or pausing in the middle of typing to stare uncertainly at the screen in front of her. At the time, Vanessa had put it down to exhaustion and the painkillers.

Now, Carolina rubs her cheek against the soft cloth of Vanessa's hoodie sleeve and digs her fingers hard into her own thigh and Vanessa realizes. External stimulous. It had been the drugs, but not in the way she'd thought.

"I need to get it quiet," Carolina says, stuck on the metaphor. "I need to focus. I need a goal."

Vanessa is very aware of the priveliges she is being granted in this request. It's rare that Carolina will allow anyone else to set her goals on the micro level, rarer still that she'll come out and ask for it. Vanessa has been learning to provide them more frequently in their personal life even as she becomes accustomed to staying well back from the day-to-day professionally. They're bothh learning what works for them, and the ways that their histories have influenced that. Achievable short-term goals may not always provide Carolina with the challenge or satisfaction she wants, but they do offer comfort. Professionally, Vanessa has been working on if not quantifying her expectations then at least putting them in to clear language. The long-term goal setting is more difficult, and she knows Carolina still finds things frustratingly nebulous at times. Everything is a process.

She looks around the tiny room. Narrow cot, sink, a low table that holds a utilitarian little lamp and a stack of her datapads. She has almost nothing, and she has to swallow back the vision of the mushroom cloud that seaps into her head.

Vanessa knows Carolina would fuck her, if she suggested it. Or vice versa. Knows Carolina approaches sex differently than Vanessa, doesn't attach the ideas of intimacy and raw exposure to it the way Vanessa does. This here, Carolina on her knees with half of her face tucked against Vanessa's hoodie, this is Carolina opening herself up. Vanessa can't even conceptualize turning this moment sexual, can feel her shoulders hunching down into the protective warmth of her hoodie at the thought. She has already been rubbed raw and numb by the day.

Carolina's breathing starts to speed up, and vanessa shakes herself. She needs something. She pushes her fingernails against the thin skin of Carolina's inner wrist at the same time she slides her hand around to cup her jaw in the other hand. Thumb tucked in the soft hollow under her jaw, she pulls her head up firmly, careful to keep her hold steady without being painful. Carolina jerks against her hands like she's waking from a light sleep. Vanessa can feel her pulse drumming rapidly under her skin.

"Stay with me," Vanessa says. "You've done all you can do. You know what happened, and there isn't anything you can do about it tonight."

Carolina doesn't say anything, but she's focusing again, and Vanessa thinks maybe there's a slight lessening of tension in her shoulders. She looks over at the stack of datapads again and wants to cry. Once upon a time she thinks she had an identity outside of the political.

"I'm working on a draft of our formal request for aid from the UNSC," she says. "You probably understand the accepted standard for these sort of things better than I do."

This is only parcially untrue-- she doubts Carolina ever had reason to examine the paperwork for a humanitarian aid mission, but she also knows that Carolina prides herself on being the best at any task she takes on, and she's sure UNSC bearucratic language and documentation is no different. Vanessa, quite frankly, isn't even sure where to begin beyond a list of supplies with a grudgingly 'please' scribbled at the bottom.

"Probably," Carolina agrees finally.

"Ok. So we'll work on that until you think you'll be able to fall asleep."

Carolina arches one eyebrow, a ghost of a smile, weak but trying, playing around her lips. "Really? You've got me all to yourself for the first time in days and we're going to do paperwork?"

Vanessa holds her gaze evenly. "Yes. We are."

Carolina drops her eyes, but the smile lingers and this time Vanessa can visibly see her shoulders relaxing. "Ok."

Vanessa climbs up on the cot and stretches across to reach the datapads, sorting through until she finds the correct one. She straightens up, one leg curled under her, the other keeping her balanced on the floor. carolina shifts a bit closer so she can rest her arms on the cot beside Vanessa.

"That can't be comfortable on your knees," Vanessa observes.

"No."

"Do you want to come up here?"

"No," carolina says, almost before Vanessa's finished speaking. She ducks her head when she says it, but after a couple seconds she straightens up and meets Vanessa's eyes determinedly. Vanessa smiles at her.

"Ok, but not for too long. I worry about your circulation."

Carolina goes to object, but Vanessa shhakes her head, and she subsides.

"Ok," Vanessa says, opening the document and turning it so Carolina can see. Carolina shifts closer so she's leaning up against Vanessa's leg.

"...This is a list," Carolina says.

"Yes. It seemed practical."

Carolina huffs a breath. "Ok. Well I guess we've got to start somewhere."

"Yeah," says Vanessa. "We do."

She'd found Carolina in the empty vehicle bay. She'd been standing in the centre of the hollow space, helmet leaned up against one booted foot, head down. Her arms had hung at her sides, and Vanessa had wondered how long it would bbe until grief pulled the strings taught again. She'd approached from the side, careful to stay in her sightlines.

"Carolina," she'd said, still uncertain.

Carolina had turned to look up at her, lifted one hand in a little wave. "Hey, Vanessa," she'd said. Vanessa had come closer, reached out a careful hand to touch her shoulder lightly. Carolina had leant into the contact without hesitation, breath leaving her in a long, harsh exhale.

"You done?" Vanessa had asked. carolina had presssed her lips together, glanced down at her helmet.

"For now," she'd said. Vanessa had felt her own armour falling away, even having removed the physical part hours before. She'd taken Carolina's hand, hard kevlar over her own callused skin, and led her back to their borrowed quarters. With the door closed, it was very quiet.


End file.
